As part of the overall process of environmental impact assessment for the planning application, MoLAS-PCA undertook to consult with various statutory and non-statutory bodies to elicit comments they felt able to make on the nature of the schemes, the impacts thereof, and the process of archaeological impact assessment being undertaken.
The list of consultees was drawn up to represent a full cross section of those statutory, professional and voluntary groups closely associated with any aspect of London’s archaeological or built heritage. Consultees included the 20th century Society, the Georgian Group, the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, the National Trust, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and the Victorian Society, as well as those referenced below. The following is a brief summary of some of the more pertinent comments:
Both the Council for British Archaeology and the Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service (English Heritage) drew particular attention to the importance of the potential for surviving paleoenvironmental evidence and other hidden deposits from all periods in the alluvium associated with the River Lea and other water bodies.
The Garden History Society drew particular attention to the Greenway, Three Mills, allotment gardens in the north west part of the Masterplan Area, and the Memorial Garden by Bromley-by-Bow gas works. The importance of the Three Mills area (including the Clock Mill, the so-called Custom House, and the historic streetscape of Three Mill Lane with its listed roadway over the bridge) was also pointed out in the reply from GLIAS.
The Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (GLIAS) drew attention to the importance of: Abbey Mills and West Ham pumping stations, and the northern Outfall Sewer; Bromley Gasworks; Trinity Buoy Wharf; East India Dock Basin and East India Dock Wall; Blackwall Yard dry docks; and the Naval Row and Duthie Street pumping stations.
Attention was also drawn (again by GLIAS) to historic ‘manufacturing sites of notes’, and clusters of such buildings as the Riverside Works at Wick Lane, Crown Wharf Iron Works, Swan Wharf, Britannia Works, Wick Lane Rubber Works, and the Alpha Works at Smeed Lane.
Sites related to historic transport were highlighted, including the Hertford Union Canal, the Hackney Cut and the Limehouse Cut, together with numbers of locks and bridges. Finally, having provided an extensive and useful list of important buildings and sites (which informed the sections on Built Heritage within the ES), GLIAS concluded by noting that the list provided was highly selective and that it should not “.. be assumed that any industrial building or site not listed above is of no importance.”
The RIBA used the opportunity to draw attention to six specific buildings or structures within or adjacent to the Masterplan Area which they consider to be examples of ‘exemplary architecture’ and which have all won RIBA awards in the past 11 years. These are: Three Mills; Abbey Mills Pumping Station; Stratford Regional Station; London Underground, Stratford Market Depot; Blackwall Yard Phase One, Blackwall Way; Blackwall Tunnel.
All of the organisations consulted by MoLAS-PCA are listed in Annex ARCH.1 of the Environmental Statement, with their full responses.
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